Proximity ID Hackathon Announces Winners of Premier Event

Hackathon focused on RFID, NFC and BLE mash-ups results in exciting new applications

December 2, 2015, Dallas, Texas — TrackHack: The Proximity ID Hackathon, the world’s first and only hackathon focused exclusively on proximity technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID), near field communication (NFC) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), announced today the winners of its premiere event at London Campus, a Google Space, November 20-22, 2015.

Along with partner Flomio, AccelerateNFC created TrackHack: The Proximity ID Hackathon to address the cross-over and interconnection among various proximity technologies used for mobile solutions. These technologies — RFID, NFC, BLE — are the basis of proximity ID solutions and will play a pivotal role in the Internet of Things (IoT).

The first-ever proximity ID hackathon held in London this past weekend was sponsored and supported by leaders in the proximity technology space, and had more than 60 application developers, hackers and technologists registered to compete for $10,000 in cash and prizes. Eleven teams submitted projects ranging from simplifying managing your contacts to keeping track of luggage while traveling to reducing electronic waste to help save the planet, as well as recording extreme sports, enabling social interaction and education, providing workplace security, and facilitating tourism.

Submitted projects were reviewed and judged by industry and technology experts innately familiar with potential of proximity ID solutions:

Mark Robinton, Director of Business Development and Strategic Innovation for HID Global

Michael Neurohr, Product Manager of the NFC Reader Library for NXP Semiconductors, responsible for documentation and software packages for the EXPLORE NFC, the first NFC expansion board for Raspberry Pi

Laurence Gizzi, technology consultant for NEC Corporation, chairman of the Compliance Program Working Group and NFC Devices Working Group for the NFC Forum

Eamonn Carey, entrepreneur in residence at Techstars, and board member at Lingvist, an advisor to Kiip, Brandwatch, Sorry as a Service and many others

The tech used in the award winning applications included NXP, HID, OmniID and UGrokIt. The winning teams are:

Third place, winning $1,500: TOURIST TRAP, an app designed to make NFC tag-enabled tourist attractions more engaging, submitted by Mark Berry.

Second place, winning $3,500: MOMENTS, an app that records you doing extreme sports with as less interaction as possible using NFC and Bluetooth submitted by Mark Brown, Justin Grierson and Tobi Ayilara.

First place, winning $5,000: AIRBAG, an application designed for airports to track, locate and create manifests of cabin luggage submitted by Chris Nicholas and Rich Brantingham.

As mobile becomes even more pervasive, so does the demand for creative mash-ups of proximity-based technologies like near field communication, radio frequency identification and Bluetooth. Organizing a successful event where hackers and developers can access ALL proximity ID tech and do what they do best — create, innovate and disrupt — is solely dependent on the commitment of leaders in the industry who sponsor, support and partner to get these technologies in the hands of talented developers. AccelerateNFC and Flomio wish to thank the following organizations for making this event a success: Interact Ventures, NFC Forum, NFC Bootcamp, Blue Bite, RFID 24/7, RAIN RFID, Serialio, U Grok It, HID Global, Omni-ID, Skute, Cellotape, RapidNFC, DangerousThings, Smartrac, and Advanced Card Systems.

The next TrackHack Proximity ID Hackathon is planned for Austin, Texas, March 11-13, 2016. Join in the hack and win cash and prizes. Visit www.trackhack.org for more details and to register for this exciting hackathon.

SOURCE: AccelerateNFC

— ABOUT —

About AccelerateNFC (www.acceleratenfc.com) — AccelerateNFC is a technology-specific, idea incubator/seed accelerator for high potential companies in the Proximity ID space. Accelerate NFC focuses on near field communication (NFC) and other proximity ID technologies like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). We bring industry expertise, mentors, resources and funding to those companies who are ready to take their ideas and products to the next level. Up to five selected companies will participate in an intensive 12-week mentoring program designed to provide access to resources normally beyond the reach of start-up or early stage companies.

About Flomio (www.flomio.com) — Disney’s Magic Band™ technology revolutionized their theme park business. Companies eager to “Disney-fy” their businesses without their own team of imagineers and billions to invest turn to Flomio, imagineers for the rest of us. Flomio creates proximity ID solutions that help enterprise clients and developers cross the chasm to web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IoT). Funded by TechStars, Flomio is fundamentally changing the way people engage with the spaces around them by making proximity ID simple to integrate, easy to deploy, and fun to use. Soon, 50 billion devices will regularly connect to the internet. Flomio’s platform empowers enterprise customers and developers to create applications that communicate with these devices. The future is ubiquitous connectivity. Flomio makes sure businesses get there first.